Fly me to the Moon (and all I want is a flight to Glasgow)

Have I vented before about travel websites routing you via really odd places? I've been offered flights routed via Chicago (north and west of here) when I want to go to Florida (south). Its so bad that I often joke that their routing me via Alaska!

I was in absolute stitches this afternoon though...we're back in the UK in November and I was looking at costs for flights from London to Glasgow and Edinburgh to Birmingham. They were coming in at a really horrendous cost ($500 each) so, knowing you can get much cheaper flights than that, I investigated further....

They didn't seem to be offering me any direct flights (of course!) and the funniest routings I found were as follows:

London to Glasgow (bear in mind this this a 1 hour flight and costs about 50 quid on cheap tickets)
London to Edinburgh (where there was a 5 1/2 hour layover, during which time you could drive back and forward to Glasgow about 3 times!), then Edinburgh to Stornoway, then Stornoway to Glasgow. Total duration 9 1/2 hours. Total cost $1000.

Edinburgh to Birmingham (again a 1 hour flight and cheap!)
Edinburgh to Gatwick, Gatwick to Glasgow, Glasgow to Birmingham. Total duration 10 1/2 hours. Total cost $900.

Can you imagine if you were deficient in British geography (I'm saying nothing about the education system of my host nation!) and were on this site trying to book flights? Perhaps as it was a US site it was assuming that I'd want to "experience" as much of the UK (or at least its airports!) as possible in a short a space of time, in the best tradition of the American Grand Tour of Europe!

Can you imagine the possibilities for luggage going astray on one of those routings? It might never catch up with me! I could be back home and my luggage would be on holiday in Milan!!!

I know someone who this happens to regularly - his luggage frequently goes to more exciting places than he does! I suggest he buys someone at customer service a really huge box of chocolates and asks them to delete whatever it is that disgruntled check-in staff have loaded into his notes on his frequent flyer account!!